The Morning Came Without My Help

While sitting on my back deck one morning recently listening to the birds sing, enjoying the trees and plants, and just taking in the beauty of that new day, a thought occurred to me: “The morning came without my help”. I had nothing to do with it. Absolutely nothing. I did not play any part whatsoever in its arrival, and yet it came anyway.

Sometimes I get all caught up in what I am doing. What contribution I am making in this world. What effect my presence here is having. Sometimes it’s good to just sit and be aware that a lot of things seem to happen just fine without my involvement. In fact, if I was honest, sometimes my involvement just seems to get in the way. Some things are supposed to be received as a gift from the One who loves to love us whether we had anything to do with it or not.

Why is it that I am often so obsessed with what I am doing, what contribution I am making, what kind of influence I have over people and situations? I understand the fact that we are created to participate with God in creation; in His kingdom. I know that the God-image in us longs to create, to bless, to work toward righteousness and justice. But as much as I would like it to be, I don’t really think that is always the primary motivation of my striving. There is something much more neurotic at play here. Much more self-centered. Many of my pursuits lead to worry, anxiety, fear, and guilt. Many of them feel more like a weight pressing down on me than a lifting up of my spirit that comes from some truly noble or selfless act.

Control. That’s it. Much of my striving comes from a need to control the world around me, at least my world. I know that there is really nothing I can do about Afghanistan, or the Gulf oil spill, or the economy in Greece. Nothing, that is, except worry. But there is plenty I can do to control my world isn’t there? Aren’t there lots of things that really depend upon my efforts, my abilities, my talents? Things that just couldn’t happen without my involvement? I’m afraid that reality tells me there are probably far less of these than I think. Mornings teach me this. Mornings come without my help. Amazing. I guess there are some things that are not intended to be controlled. Some things are just there to be enjoyed. And some things (quite a lot actually) might just happen anyway, even without my help.

“His compassions never fail.

They are new every morning.

Great is Your faithfulness.”

Lamentations 3:22-23

Leaning Toward Our Suffering

5th Week of Lent

There is a truth in life that most of us are fairly reluctant to accept. In fact we usually go to great lengths to avoid the searing impact it usually has on us. It’s summed up in phrases like, “No pain, no gain”, and “It’s always darkest before the dawn”, and, “Suffer not, live not”. Each of these expressions point to the truth we spend great energy trying to avoid: that pain, darkness, suffering do not have to be ends in and of themselves. They can actually be guides to something that we would have never been able to experience without them.

As we enter into the last week of lent, the week that we call Holy Week, I am struck once again by the fact that you cannot arise to the light of Easter without going through the darkness of Holy Week. Each year I face this, and each year something inside me wants to scream, “NOOOOOO. Don’t make me go there. Don’t make me walk through pain and darkness and suffering. Just give me a Mega dose of Easter life and joy. THAT’s what I really need!” And yet each year I step into Holy Week knowing, “No pain, no gain”, and “It’s always darkest before the dawn”, and “Suffer not, live not”.

You see the richness of Holy Week for me is that it stands as an incredible metaphor concerning the redemptive power of suffering in our lives. It is, of course, anchored in the redemptive suffering of Jesus on the cross for us. But it does not, it cannot, end there. The suffering of Jesus grew out of His living in the Father’s love for Him and for all humanity. It had meaning. And when we live our lives in the Father’s love then our suffering can have meaning too. Redemptive meaning.

Now, I want to be very cautious here. I know that there is much suffering in our world that is tragic and even horrendous that doesn't deserve the glib, and perhaps flippant expressions that I’ve listed above. There are some levels of pain and suffering that simply defy understanding in this life. Even so, I am still convinced that life lived in the Father’s loving embrace means that our suffering can somehow be miraculously “redeemed”, it is “bought back” in such a way that His glorious and ultimate will can be done in us. It does not mean that God always initiates the suffering that threatens to crush us (though I am sure He sometimes does). It does mean that there is no suffering so great, there is no evil so deep, there is no darkness so grim that God cannot redeem it for His own life-giving purposes in us.

As I said, by nature we seek to avoid things that hurt us at all levels: physical, psychological, relational, spiritual. And yet it is often in the facing (dare I say even embracing) of these hurtful places that we find our greatest healing. It is as we lean toward our suffering that we truly experience God leaning toward us.

Jesus demonstrated this for us when He came to a place in His life when it was time to head toward Jerusalem in order to face and embrace the suffering necessary for our healing. He was at the furthest place from Jerusalem that He ever travelled in His ministry years. Way up in northern Palestine, in a town called Caesarea Philippi. Luke 9:51 tells us that, “As the time approached for Him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus RESOLUTELY set out for Jerusalem.” In other words, He turned His face toward, He leaned toward the point of what would be His greatest suffering. He knew what was coming and He walked toward it.

Jesus' resolute courage and determination to live within the Father’s love created what we call Holy Week. It embodies the heart of Christianity: the death and resurrection of Christ for us. It also serves as a timeless reminder that as we face and embrace the challenges, pain, darkness and suffering of our lives, but do so embedded in the Father’s love, that we too will awaken into the light of new life.

I recently heard someone use the example of falling into quicksand as an illustration of leaning toward our suffering. When someone is sinking in quicksand intuitively they begin to fight and squirm trying to get themselves out. In doing so they shift their weight from one leg to another, each time putting all of their weight on the very small surface of the bottom of one foot. As a result, all that their squirming accomplishes is to sink deeper and deeper. But if there is any hope of getting out of quicksand it requires doing something that is counterintuitive to what we might think. A person must displace as much of their body mass as possible onto the quicksand itself in order to keep from sinking further. Then you can begin to turn and try to roll your way over to the side and to safety. In a sense we must lean into, lay against, or get close to the very thing that threatens to destroy us. “Getting with” our own suffering, as odd as it may sound, is often the only way to keep it from destroying us.

So, I now turn my eyes now toward Holy Week. I face my own times of suffering. I lean into the often confusing darkness that grips my own soul, knowing that Jesus has already walked there and is waiting on the other side. So this coming week I have an odd suggestion for you. Attend a Holy Week service of some kind, but make sure that it is the darkest, most morose, depressing service that you can find. Put off, just for a moment, the joyful celebration of the resurrection. That will come. But this coming week lean into the pain that comes before the gain, the darkness that engulfs us before the dawn, the suffering that produces life and healing for us. Leaning may make us feel a bit off balance, but that is exactly the place we need to be in order to live in the embrace of the Father.

Paying Attention

4th Week of Lent

I am reasonably sure that I am not the only driver who has ever had this experience: you are driving along and you find yourself so distracted that all of a sudden you realize that you are 2 exits past the one you intended to take.

Paying attention. It was drilled into us in Drivers Ed. (those of us who actually took Drivers Ed.). It is the mantra of mothers teaching their children how to cross the street (“look left, then right, then left, then right again, then left again, etc., etc.”). It’s what coaches mean when they scream at their players, “Get your head in the game!” It’s what wives want when they ask, “Are you listening to me?” It’s why we have what are called “distracted driving laws” which tell us that while we are driving we should not text, eat, put on make-up, look at the scenery, sing too loudly, or talk to anyone but ourselves. Why? Distraction prevents us from paying attention, and paying attention is important to staying alive.

What is true of the physical world around us is also true of the spiritual world within us. Just as we are so prone to allowing distractions to divert our attention in our daily lives we are equally prone to letting distractions keep us from paying attention to the present work of God in our spiritual lives. That’s one reason why Lent is so important for us. It is a period of time where we intentionally pay attention. We should be doing this all the time but distraction is often a drug far too powerful to resist on an on-going basis. So we enter into seasons during the year like Advent and Lent and Easter (yes, Easter is a season not a day). Lent calls us to attend to the presence of God around us and within us. More specifically, it calls us to attend to the present presence of God around us and within us. This is a critically important distinction to make, because if you are like me you tend to focus the energy of your attention either in the past or in the future.

For me, my distraction drug of choice has always been the future. I have spent so much time and energy through much of my life extending myself out into the future. It’s not bad to have dreams and aspirations but for me those have often robbed me of living fully in the here and now. I admit that I have not always been “fully present” in my own life. I have been “out there” somewhere dreaming and wondering what life will be like someday.

For others their distraction drug may be the past. This is especially tempting for people as they enter into their mid-life and senior years. They look back at what life was like when the kids were little, or when they were working, or when twitter was how birds sang in the back yard first thing in the morning. Back then. Back when life was good (though if we were honest we didn’t always think so at the time).

Now, there is nothing wrong with a nostalgic look to the past, or with a hopeful gaze into the future. We would not be human if we did not engage in such activities. In fact, it is one of the things that truly sets us apart from other aspects of creation. The problem is when we dwell there in such a way that the present begins to fade in importance. But the past-lovers and future-dwellers will tell us these are often much more preferred places to live than the present. Perhaps, but the problem is that God is a God of the present. He dwells eternally in the here and now. Isn’t it interesting that God said to Moses, “I AM”, not “I WAS”, or “I WILL BE”. Those are true to be sure but God chose a phrase that communicated that He is ever present in the here and now.

Reflecting back upon His presence with us in the past, or thinking ahead hoping for His presence with us in the future may be comforting exercises but God is ever calling us to dwell with Him fully in each moment as it presents itself to us. Neglecting to do so robs us of the intimacy of God’s presence. Attention to the present moment with God is the only way to truly hear Him and experience His presence with us.

I have to admit, though, I’m not very good at this. I want to be. I desperately want to live in such a way that I am aware of God in the hundreds of little things going on around me in every moment. I would love to cultivate the kind of present moment relationship with Him that makes discerning His will nothing more than a glance upward instead of needing a 3 day silent retreat just to get the ball rolling. But, I confess, I am often addicted to distraction. That’s why I need Lent. It’s why I need this Lenten season. If there is any great need in my own life right now it’s the need to let go of the past AND the future and to live fully in the present moment just as it is, with all of its pain, joy, confusion, peace, fearfulness, or contentment. Whatever it is, it has God present in it. And who would want to miss that?

Rain at Winter's End

3rd Week of Lent

[I came across this poem by Ruth Haley Barton and it so captures my own feelings during this lenten season that I offer it to you for your own reflection.]

Rain at Winter's End
by Ruth Haley Barton

‟Look, a little cloud no bigger than a person's hand
is rising out of the sea!″
I Kings 18:44

I love the way the rain comes at winter's end
to hose down the sooty earth,
and wash away the dirt that comes from who-knows-where.

Oh God,
I need a cleansing rain in my life,
dirty as I am with the grit and grime of these dark years.
My heart is hard and crusty
like patches of old snow in the yard,
my life littered with trash I don't recognize
and dead, brown grass where it used to be so green.

Today I would settle for a little cloud
no bigger than a person's hand
far off in the distance
rising out of the sea of this disillusionment.

Today, if I saw such a cloud
I would run like Elijah--
loins girded,
strengthened by the hand of the Lord
in hopes that I could be there when the deluge came.

Warm rain
Softening the hardness of my heart
Washing away the pain
Enlivening this dead earth.

Today, if I saw even a hint of such a cloud,
I would lay myself down upon the earth
and bow my heart low
Waiting for the miracle that would signal the changing of the season
the end of this drought
the coming of spring
in the winter of my heart.

Letting Go

2nd Week of Lent

There is a tree in my neighborhood where I walk (see picture). I have been watching this tree for several months now. I have watched it go from beautiful green to many shades of orange and brown in the fall. But this tree is different from the trees around it. The other trees went through the same process but one by one they began letting go of their leaves so that now they all stand completely barren. No sign of any former life on them. But this one tree has not yet let go of a single leaf. She stands completely full of dead, shriveled, brittle leaves and, as far as I can tell, not one has yet to fall to the ground. I call her "The Clinging Tree".

Every time I walk past this tree I feel a deep sense of understanding and empathy for her. She clings to what once was. She is hanging on to the beauty that her life used to be. She tenaciously holds on to that which used to define her as a healthy, living, vibrant part of God’s creation. I imagine her looking around at her neighbors, watching what was happening to them and thinking, “That’s not going to happen to me. I refuse to look like that, all barren and empty. Who wants to gaze upon or stand beneath a tree like that. No, I will hold on to my life and never let it go.”

She doesn’t realize that she is the one who looks odd now. The other trees, even in their barren state, look quite normal. That’s what happens in winter. That’s how you are supposed to look. That’s how a tree prepares itself for the new life of spring. But the other trees don’t seem to be willing to share what they know. Their silence seems as if they are holding back some secret, some inner knowledge of how things are supposed to work. Or maybe they know something that we don’t. Maybe having gone through a few winters themselves they have come to learn that letting go doesn’t come from someone telling you that it’s time. It comes from an inner awareness that refusing to let go never brings back the past, it only prevents us from receiving the present and walking into the future.

Spiritual writers for centuries have talked about having ‘attachments’ in our lives. These are not things that have attached themselves to us but are things that we have attached ourselves to. They may be obvious things like money or possessions or career, but they may also be more subtle things like attitudes, memories, or a previous golden era in our life. There really is an endless list of what could be an attachment for us because all of us are different. The common denominator for any attachment, though, is that it either does, or once did, or we hope that it will some day give us some sense of purpose, belonging, or fulfillment. We end up looking to it to give us something that God says only He can give.

When we let go of these attachments in appropriate ways and at appropriate times it may feel like we are closing ourselves off from life but actually we are instead opening ourselves up to the new life that waits for us when there is sufficient room to receive them. Attachments are to the soul what clutter is to one’s home. Just watch the T.V. show ‘Hoarders’ sometime to see what effect clutter has on people’s lives. Attachments are clutter in our soul. Letting go of the old is the only way of receiving the new, whatever that will be.

The process of metamorphosis (what caterpillars go through to become butterflies) has become a life metaphor for me lately. I read recently that not all caterpillars go through this process in the same way. When it comes time to begin spinning the cocoon that becomes the womb that eventually gives birth to something new, some caterpillars actually resist this initial process and thereby put off entering into what will turn them into a butterfly. They cling to their former state, refusing to let go of what once was. This state of clinging is called “diapause”. It results in either putting off new life until next season or, in some cases, simply means death. Isn’t it interesting that creation is full of things that have a hard time letting go. Whether it’s a stubborn tree refusing to shed its leaves, or a caterpillar clinging to its former self, or you and I fiercely gripping onto the attachments of our lives the outcome is always the same: new life gets delayed.

Lent is a kind of long winter that is intended to be a time of learning how to embrace our own emptiness and barrenness while at the same time holding onto the glorious hope of new life. But often we try and sit through winter clinging to things that offer a false hope of spring. The irony is that we do this, not because we are trying to avoid spring, but because we desperately long for it. The problem is in thinking that by clinging we will receive what our hearts most long for. But it is only in letting go that we can sit with our own emptiness in the patient awareness that spring is just around the corner.

Isaiah 43:18 says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” When it comes right down to it there is only one appropriate kind of clinging; only one kind of attachment that is actually healthy for the human soul. It's summed up in three simple words spoken by Jesus at a time when His disciples were about to enter into the biggest “letting go” season of their lives: “Abide in me”. Tenaciously clinging to Jesus will help us to release our grip on those other attachments that we think can give us what we desire most.

I am waiting to see what happens with “The Clinging Tree”. But until then she reminds of my own clinging tendencies and how there is a kind of stark beauty in being empty and barren while waiting for the magnificence of spring.

[I have listed in the post below a copy of one of my favorite poems. It beautifully speaks of the process of letting go.]

The Sacrament of Waiting

The Sacrament of Waiting
by Macrina Wiederkehr

Slowly, she celebrated the sacrament of letting go.
First she surrendered her green, then the orange, yellow, and red,

finally she let go of her brown.

Shedding her last leaf she stood empty and silent, stripped bare.
Leaning against the winter sky she began her vigil of trust.

Shedding her last leaf she watched its journey to the ground.

She stood in silence wearing the color of emptiness,

her branches wondering:

How do you give shade with so much gone?

And then, the sacrament of waiting began.

The sunrise and sunset watched with tenderness.

Clothing her with silhouettes they kept her hope alive.

They helped her understand that her vulnerability,

her dependence and need, her emptiness, her readiness to receive

were giving her a new kind of beauty.

Every morning and every evening they stood in silence

and celebrated together the sacrament of waiting.

(from, Seasons of Your Heart)

Lent: A Slow Walk Through Winter

Ash Wednesday 2010

It has been an unseasonably mild winter here in the Pacific Northwest. While other parts of the country are getting slammed with snow and ice and flooding I am walking around my neighborhood looking at cherry blossoms emerging from trees that only a few weeks ago looked empty and barren. I started noticing a week or two ago the buds coming much earlier than normal. I’m not a winter kind of guy. So when I see new life emerging from what once looked lifeless something in me grabs on to that as a sign of hope that my own sense of barren emptiness may soon give way to the glorious gift of life and beauty.

I love spring. But the thing about spring that we often forget is that it has to follow winter. Spring is only spring because there has been a winter. During winter everything looks like it has died. The grass doesn’t grow; the trees have lost their leaves; it’s dark and grey more than it is light (remember I’m talking about the Pacific Northwest here). To the uninformed observer it might look as though it's the end of life. There was a spring, a summer, a fall and now everything has died and life is over. But to the person who has been through a few winters of their own they know that what looks like death is only the preamble to a glorious new beginning. But this new beginning must, let me state that a little more forcefully, ABSOLUTELY MUST!!!! be preceded by the death of winter.

Ash Wednesday is the day that we enter into a kind of spiritual winter called Lent. For the next 40 days leading up to Easter we remind ourselves that new life is always preceded by death. We learn anew the value of letting go, giving up the old in order to make room for the new that God will soon bring in us. Just as the trees must release their grip on each leaf and allow it to fall to the ground and die, so must we release our anxious clinging to those things that only hold us back from entering into the spring of our soul. In a sense we must surrender to the winter in order to more gloriously grasp the spring.

As I said, I’m not a winter kind of guy. In my mind winters are something to endure in order to get to the spring. If there were some other way to get there I would take it. I think that may be why so many people head south to Arizona during this time. It’s an avoidance technique used to deny the existence of winter and move right from fall to spring. But this doesn’t work when it comes to the spring time that God wants to bring to our soul. There is no avoiding winter in the spiritual world. People try, but it is simply impossible to arrive at new life without going through a kind of death and emptying of self. In fact new life is a far more powerful experience when we not only go through our own spiritual winter but actually embrace it. That’s right, this winter-hating, avoid-the-cold, detest-the-darkness kind of guy is saying that we must learn how to embrace the winter, not out of necessity, but out of love for God and the journey toward a deeper life in Him.

One of the most counter-intuitive aspects of the spiritual world is that life is only arrived at through death. Lent gives us an unhurried time to walk through the winter, observing what is dying (or needs to die) in us. It allows us time to listen to the darkness of the tomb that brought forth the light of new life. It tells us that when we feel the dark, bleak spiritual winter of our own soul that this is not an end but simply an overture to a new symphony of life that will soon be performed in us.

Lent is intended to be a slow walk. You are supposed to feel the cold, sense the darkness, enter into the emptiness. A slow walk through winter is the only way to fully emerge into the promise of springtime. So maybe the thing that you most need to give up for Lent this year, is hurry.

[I invite you to pray with me the lenten prayer by Henri Nouwen that I have included in the post below.]

A Lenten Prayer

[Taken from, The Road to Daybreak, by Henri Nouwen]

The Lenten season begins. It is a time to be with you, Lord, in a special way, a time to pray, to fast, and thus to follow you on your way to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, and to the final victory over death.

I am still so divided. I truly want to follow you, but I also want to follow my own desires and lend an ear to the voices that speak about prestige, success, pleasure, power, and influence. Help me to become deaf to these voices and more attentive to your voice, which calls me to choose the narrow road to life.

I know that Lent is going to be a very hard time for me. The choice for your way has to be made every moment of my life. I have to choose thoughts that are your thoughts, words that are your words, and actions that are your actions. There are not times or places without choices. And I know how deeply I resist choosing you.

Please, Lord, be with me at every moment and in every place. Give me the strength and the courage to live this season faithfully, so that, when Easter comes, I will be able to taste with joy the new life that you have prepared for me.

Amen.